Chapter 149

Chapter 149

“I do hope Charlotte didn’t cause you any trouble. I’m afraid she’s still a bit immature.”

As soon as Roxana had sat down, one of the attendants in the rose garden came to set her place at their table.

“No, not at all. We were simply introducing ourselves.”

“Oh, then I’m quite glad to hear that.”

She beamed once again at Sylvia who had shaken her head a second time to emphasize that there had been nothing amiss prior to her arrival. The Agrece’s smile was so beautiful that the numerous onlookers surrounding them seemed to gasp collectively in awe. Even Sylvia felt herself at a loss for words and instead began to mumble as if speaking more directly to such a peerless beauty was a mortal sin. “Um... Are you by any chance very close to Lady Charlotte as well?”

“Oh hell no! Definitely not!”

The exchange between the Agrece sisters had indeed been rather ambiguous to an outsider, thus the Pedelian required additional information in order to determine if the redhead was someone deserving of a more friendly approach. However, Jeremy had chimed in before his sister could answer in order to shut down any such concerns on Sylvia’s part. After clearing his throat in what she imagined was his attempt at recovering his formal persona, he continued.

“It’s like I said earlier—the only sibling Big Sis Xana cares about is me.”

At hearing his bold declaration, Roxana quietly turned to look at her beloved brother. His handsome face seemed to be glowing with pride as he sheepishly grinned and looked ahead rather than turn to meet her gaze.

She had in truth been genuinely curious about what his siblings had been discussing with Sylvia prior to her arrival. However, upon seeing Jeremy’s gleeful expression as he reaffirmed the significance of their bond she had confided in him two nights prior, it wasn’t difficult to guess what sort of conversation she had missed.

Meanwhile, the Blue Princess was staring at him with a strangely annoyed expression. However, as soon as her golden eyes met Roxana’s, she quickly returned to smiling.

Once the mood seemed to be more amicable for all three of them, the blond woman continued on casually. “We Agreces are quite independent, so we don’t engage all that much with our other kinsmen.”

As young as she was, Sylvia was quick to pick up on her future sister-in-law’s implication. It came as quite a relief to know that she wouldn’t need to befriend another Agrece in consideration of Roxana’s feelings. And for some reason, not having to play nice with that Charlotte girl was especially fortunate in her mind.

But then... Does that mean all of Jeremy’s boasting was true? She suddenly found it difficult to control her expression. The smile she was famous for holding was being sullied by feelings of envy and irritation. Luckily, although the Agrece siblings were sitting across from her at the table, the lovely woman’s scarlet eyes were focusing on someone in the distance beyond the troubled Pedelian.

The Castro clan leader Badrisha had evidently decided to attend the tea party and was sitting at a table with the Blue Madame Jeanne Pedelian. When Roxana had briefly met Badrisha at the gathering the previous winter, she sensed that the Red Master was a no-nonsense sort of woman and clan leader. Her appearance was essentially an older, female version of her son Luzark. And once again, it couldn’t go without notice that very few Castros were in attendance at the party that day.

Not only that, but the few who were there appeared somber and uncharacteristically tense. The simplest explanation was that their clan was experiencing some sort of internal turmoil. In fact, thanks to her research, Roxana knew that what they were hiding was just the sort of thing her clan could use to subjugate the Red clan.

Without warning, the Red Master cast a sharp glance toward the Agrece siblings’ table. Without giving away that she had been staring, the smooth Agrece calmly turned her gaze away from the older woman and reached for her teacup.

“Oh! By the way, I heard there was a bit of trouble between your clan and the Fipellions on the way to the castle. Did something happen?”

“Well, Miss Pedelian...”

It was soon painfully obvious that Badrisha had decided to join the tea party in order to keep a handle on the Agreces’ movements. As Jeremy and Sylvia continued to chatter on, Roxana refocused on enjoying her tea.

* * *

After leaving his sister in the rose garden, Cassis went straight to Nix’s cell. The Blue knight who was stationed at the door stood at attention as he prepared to update his young leader on the status of the puppet.

“You were behaving so well. Why all the trouble all of a sudden?”

His tone was icy cold as he glared down at the blond. The puppet looked worn out, but the Pedelian couldn’t fathom how such a thing was possible despite the fact that the doll appeared even paler than the day before. The annoyance in Nix’s gaze over having already answered the same question multiple times seemed to speak before he did.

“How many times do I have to repeat myself?! That man was in here! I’m not making this up!”

Cassis glanced toward the knight on guard, but the man shook his head to signal an unambiguous “no.”

“No one has come while I’ve been stationed at the door, sir.”

“Then he must have been seeing things.”

The Blue Heir was quick to dismiss the puppet, but the aggrieved, blond youth began to angrily shout at his guard.

“What?! Tell the truth, damn it! Perhaps you were distracted and didn’t notice him come in here!”

“Watch your tongue, puppet! I would never do anything so careless and sully the Pedelian clan’s honor!”

The knight was equally furious. For a moment, Nix began to doubt himself and wonder if he might have actually seen a ghost, but then...

“That b*tch! Even yesterday she kept running her putrid mouth. I bet all that nonsense she filled my head finally got to me. I swear I’ll...!” He continued to curse and blame Roxana silently for causing his confusion. “She told you yesterday that Deon Agrece came into this room?”

Cassis rather quickly put together who the doll was muttering about.

“That’s right. I figured she was lying at first, but before long I could tell she was telling the truth.”

“I see...”

The silver-haired man scanned the interior of the cell more closely. He couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Not even Roxana’s butterfly, which he had assumed she would have sent to keep watch over her brother’s impostor, was giving off any traces of its presence. The only thing he could pick up on was the faint yet familiar aura she had left in her wake.

After a bit more consideration, he returned his attention to the puppet. “If it will calm you down, we can move you elsewhere.”

“Really?!”

“You’ll only be a bother to everyone if you keep ranting about every little thing you think you’ve seen.”

Despite the sarcastic dig at his sanity, the doll was happiness incarnate at knowing he would not have to toil away in that tainted cell another night. Almost as soon as he suggested it, the Blue Heir and the knight transferred Nix to a different cell on the same floor of the tower. Regardless of its proximity to his original location, he seemed genuinely relieved to just be away from the space his body’s killer had infiltrated. He quietly scanned his new surroundings as the guard reattached his shackles.

Cassis did the same from the doorway, then concluded that there wasn’t a poison butterfly in the new cell either. He once again returned his focus to the puppet, who was finally sitting amiably on the floor, then signaled the knight to leave them after fulfilling his duty.

Once the heavy door shut behind him, he finally addressed the blond again. “Satisfied now?”

With a much calmer expression on his young face, Nix answered right away. “I definitely feel much better than I did earlier.” Then as if to conceal the embarrassment finally coming over him for having made such a fuss in the first place, he continued in a far sharper tone. “But honestly, if those guards had done their jobs properly in the first place, none of this would have happened! I mean, how was that woman able to just waltz in there last night? And it wasn’t just for a peek inside. She had ample time to spout all sorts of rubbish!”

Cassis began to move toward the ranting doll as he waited for the creation to finish blowing off his steam.

“Let me ask you something. Do you only fear Deon Agrece?”

“W-What?”

Nix whipped his head up and began to stammer at the eerily menacing tone of the question. Before he could properly take in what was occurring, the Blue Heir was upon him and gripping his wrist like a vice.

Snap!

“Argh!”

His scream echoed throughout his cell as he struggled to get free, but the Pedelian had him hopelessly pinned to the floor.

“Let go of me!”

As the puppet aimed his other hand at his captor, Cassis caught it in midair, then snapped that wrist as well.

“Listen up, you Vertium abomination!”

No matter how much he writhed in pain, there wasn’t a modicum of mercy in the golden eyes bearing down on him. Then a calm, unfeeling voice fell on his eardrums like massive boulders.

“I truly despise you and would delight in destroying you along with any and everything in this world that brings Roxana even a moment’s unease if I could.”

As the two’s eyes finally met, the puppet felt the crushing weight of the intensity behind the Blue Heir’s glare. It was so unnerving that he could feel every last hair on his body stand on end.

“Don’t ever forget that you are merely one of those things I am waiting to destroy in order to protect her.”

As Cassis pressed down on his wrists even more, Nix let out an even greater shriek of pain. But almost immediately after, he sensed that same calm voice whispering into his ear that he should be quiet while some sort of energy flowed into his wrists. In an instant, the puppet’s broken bones began to mend.

Cassis continued in his calm, yet equally unsettling tone.

“The only reason I haven’t killed you already is that... there’s a side of me that fears my actions might upset her.”

To the blond’s astonishment, his broken wrists felt as good as new despite the fact that he was still being held down. Even though the silver-haired man was on the floor as well, his presence over the puppet felt monumental.

Nix began to worry that if he so much as moved an inch, the giant, golden-eyed beast would bury his sharp claws in him again without a moment’s hesitation. He shuddered at the thought of his captor ripping straight into his core next.

“To put it simply, the only reason you’re alive still is thanks to Roxana.”

Crack!

Pain far more excruciating than what he had endured just moments ago surged through his wrist and throughout the rest of his helpless body. Wherever the pain seemed to reach it seemed to penetrate his bones and tear his skin into tiny pieces.

This time, the doll struggled to even formulate a scream.

“Ugh... Aaaah!”

As his victim convulsed from the unbearable suffering, Cassis glared down at him coldly.

“You see, my displeasure with you is that even now you don’t seem to have the appropriate amount of appreciation or respect for her when she’s the one who’s keeping me from killing you.”